Drum Roll for a Summer Festival of the New

MANCHESTER, Englandâ€"Kenneth Branagh was there with the director Rob Ashcroft. The actress Maxine Peake was there. Josie Rourke, the artistic director of London’s Donmar Warehouse, was there. The occasion The announcement of this year’s Manchester International Festival program by its director, Alex Poots.

The setting last week was a suitably dramatic one: the cavernous space of the late 19th-century Campfield Market Hall, thronged with festival participants, sponsors and journalists, and lined with local food stalls to feed the hungry crowd after Mr. Poots made his announcements.

The biennial Manchester International Festival, which had its first edition in 2007, isâ€"at least on an international scaleâ€" the only multi-arts festival worldwide to feature exclusively new work.

There’s a good reason for that: Creating new artworks is expensive and risky, with no predictable outcome or financial reward. But it’s a thrilling idea, and the Mancheser International Festival and Mr. Poots (who has directed it from the outset) have established a reputation for imaginative, outlandish, ambitious projects that often subsequently migrate to other countries: Bjork’s futuristic “Biophilia” concert; an opera by Damon Albarn of Blur; Robert Wilson’s “Life and Death of Marina Abramovic.”

This year’s edition, from July 4 to 21, keeps the ante up. Mr. Poots, who is also the director of the Park Avenue Armory in New York, spent an hour describing a dazzling array of projects, sometimes stepping back to let the artists involved take the spotlight.

The filmmaker Adam Curtis talked about his collaboration with the band Massive Attack (“You’re going to get a classic Massive Attack gig, but something else also,” he! said. “I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”). Ms. Peake spoke about starring in an adaptation of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Masque of Anarchy,” an epic 91-verse poem that was inspired by the 1819 Peterloo massacre in Manchester in 1819. Ms. Rourke, who hails from neighboring Salford (as she was careful to point out, after Mr. Poots introduced her as Mancunian) will direct Matt Charman’s drama “The Machine,” about the 1997 faceoff between the chess champion Garry Kasparov and the I.B.M. computer, Deep Blue.

Mr. Poots provided details for those not in Manchester to introduce their projects. Robert Wilson is directing a new show, “The Old Woman,” an adaptation of a story by theRussian author Daniil Kharms, and starring Willem Dafoe and Mikhail Baryshnikov (described by Mr. Poots as “the dancer and ‘Sex and the City’ star”). Peter Sellars will direct “Michelangelo Sonnets,” using Shostakovich’s “Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti” and the artist’s drawings.

There will be a one-off concert from the great Sufi singer Abida Parveen; a group art show, “do it 20 13,” curated by the director of London’s Serpentine Gallery Hans Ulrich Obrist; a performance by the Argentinean pianist Martha Argerich; a “Rite of Spring” from the theater director Romeo Castellucci and the Perm orchestra that involves, according to Mr. Poots, “the choreography of bone dust.”

With the exception of performance pieces from Dan Graham, Tino Sehgal, Mette Ingvartsen, and Marten Spangberg, that’s more or less the only choreography around for thi! s festiva! l. Asked later why there was such a minimal dance component, Mr. Poots said that he had commissioned a major, large-scale dance piece for this festival, but that it hadn’t been ready, and would be scheduled for 2015.

Towards the end of the presentation, Mr. Branagh arrived on stage with Mr. Ashford to speak of the “Macbeth”â€"or, as he said, “the Scottish play”â€"that they will present in a deconsecrated church. (Performances are already sold out, but a big-screen relay to a crowd of 5,000 is planned for July 20.)

During his speech, Mr. Branagh thanked the city of Manchester for having the vision and courage, at a difficult economic moment, to sustain the ambitious, adventurous festival. Mr. Poots echoed his words in his closing remarks. “The arts are at the heart of our society,” he said. “We can’t cut the heart out.”

Have you been to past Manchester festivals What have you seen and how did you like it